Lora Senf: "Unnamed Bones" (ARC Review)

Title: Unnamed Bones [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Lora Senf [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Supernatural
Year: 2026
Age: 14+
Stars: 4/5
Pros: Puts a refreshing, poignant spin on a familiar premise. Explores themes of mental health, grief, inner strength and human connection. Doesn't waste time with unnecessary romance.
Cons: The horror scenario feels a tad too formulaic at first.   
WARNING! Drowning, body horror/botanical horror, blood and gore/injuries, self-harm, suicide, fire/burning, vomiting. Depression, trauma, grief.
Will appeal to: Those who enjoy a psychological twist on the stranded-cast-facing-a-nightmare scenario.

Blurb: Reckless, depressed, impulsive and sixteen, Harrow Lane is going to an island that shouldn’t exist to look for answers about the death of her father. Things immediately go very wrong and keep getting worse. With no way to reach the outside world and no understanding of the rules of the island, Harrow and her friends are in mortal danger. Matters are only complicated by Harrow’s emotions - she’s given her biggest feelings human faces and personalities and does her best to keep them locked away in a seedy motel she built in her mind. It’s creating sort of an “Inside Out in hell” situation as they fight for survival against a creature that seems to be made entirely of terror and who very well might spell the end of the world. (Amazon excerpt)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on Edelweiss. Thanks to Union Square & Co. for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

FRESH PERSPECTIVE

A group of teens (usually all girls, not in this case) stranded on an (often impossible) island that does its best to break their bodies and their sanity: a common enough scenario in YA horror. But Senf gives it a couple of spins that make Unnamed Bones stand out among the number of stories sharing the same premise. When this one starts, Harrow's father has been missing for a year after disappearing into a lake that shouldn't exist, at whose center, recently, an equally unexplainable island showed up. Feeling a sort of magnetic pull towards the island, Harrow decides to investigate its nature with three other teens - her former best friend Olive, the latter's sort-of boyfriend Ethan, and hiker/biker Shane - who are looking for an adventure. The author doesn't waste time unleashing horrors upon her characters (all while building a subtler sense of menace that comes from their having to figure out the rules of the place and its purpose), and though the worst ones may feel - or look - familiar at first, the ending will make you see them in a whole new light. Mind you - the journey to get there is a powerful one, marked by a string of experiences and findings on the characters' part more than by unexpected twists (though there are a handful of them, especially a shocking one that I didn't see coming). You might say the story resembles a videogame where the protagonist and her friends gather knowledge (and in a way, weapons - only not conventional ones) while progressing towards the ultimate big bad - a game that, for all its ordeals and nightmares, comes with a lot of heart, and delivers a bittersweet, yet somehow hopeful ending. [...]

PANDORA'S BOX

If the island's secrets and purpose stand out enough in a sea (no pun intended) of similar narratives, the main character's inner world and the way she deals with it are the real stars of the show. In a sort of reverse Inside Out, a depressed Harrow has taken to dealing with her emotions by anthropomorphising them and locking them away in a seedy motel she built in her own mind. But the island is threatening this arrangement, to the point that her inner world begins to spill into the external one. Harrow's emotions become additional characters, and she's forced to confront them in a way she hasn't before - which creates a lot of interesting dynamics/surprises and keeps the story fresh and exciting beyond the, you know, "basic" survival aspect. I can't say too much about the way Senf incorporates Harrow's coping mechanism into the plot, but I will note that it operates at the intersection between plot device and coming-of-age prompt, in a way that makes for a satisfying (if technically open and not happily-ever-after coded) conclusion. Harrow and her personified emotions aside, the rest of the cast is captivating and relatable enough to create a connection with the reader (at least when it comes to the characters who stay in the story long enough...😶), and the author's signature prose - taut and lyrical at the same time - seals the deal on a story that will resonate with teens and adults alike, provided that they aren't too squeamish.

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Like this book? You might also be interested in Kyrie McCauley: "Bad Graces"; Rebekah Faubion: "Lost Girls of Hollow Lake".